What’s going into this new building on the southwest corner of Burbank and Van Nuys bouelvards on the Van Nuys Auto Row? (Photo by Steven Rosenberg)

This just in: As we know, Coffee Bean is out at Ralphs on Burbank Boulevard, but a sign has gone out in front: Starbucks is in:

And now, back to the former beginning of this post:

Two of the four corners at Burbank and Van Nuys boulevards in the heart (if such a thing exists) of Van Nuys Auto Row have been gutted or flattened and rebuilt.

The northwest corner, formerly a Chevrolet dealer, is now a CVS drugstore. The southeast corner, formerly the Keyboard Concepts piano retailer (which moved across Burbank Boulevard and a few buildings south) is now a rebuilt center with a Chipotle fresh-Mexican restaurant on the corner, a Verizon Wireless store next to that and a huge, huge empty space between it and the Pedalers West bicycle shop.

That bicycle shop, by the way, is huge. And they had what you call “seat guts,” aka the nuts, bolts and spacer/washers that hold bicycle seats to their post, when I needed them. And cheaply, too.

The southeast corner is still a Mobil gas station.

That leaves the southwest corner, until recently a used-car lot that relocated a couple blocks south to the space recently vacated by Keyes Hyundai before it moved back into the refurbished space formerly occupied by Keyes European before it moved to a new, expansive space south on Van Nuys Boulevard. Complicated enough? There’s been a lot of movement, reconstruction and revitalization on Van Nuys Auto Row over the past couple of years.

Back to the southwest corner of Burbank and Van Nuys boulevards. It is now the site of a building under construction with what looks like ample space left over for parking.

My sources, who wish to remain nameless, say a Chase bank will occupy the site.

But I couldn’t help noticing that the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf kiosk inside the Ralphs market across Van Nuys Boulevard has shuttered. (Coffee kiosks inside supermarkets are useless, by the way).

Could that mean a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on the southwest corner? A freestanding Coffee Bean in Van Nuys? It’s way, way more than too good to be true.

Coffee Bean is the logical tenant; there are Chase banks branches a few blocks north in the Van Nuys Civic Center and a few blocks southeast in the Trader Joe’s parking lot (a horrible location due to the untenable parking situation). Nobody needs another Chase bank.

But a Coffee Bean? That would considerably lighten the load on the Starbucks at the corner of Burbank Boulevard and Tilden Avenue. It’s one of the busiest Starbucks locations I’ve seen, and it’s pretty clear the residents of southeast Van Nuys and north Sherman Oaks (the “southeast” and “north” designations being purely my own, in case you hadn’t noticed) love coffee. Sitting and drinking coffee. Preferably with their dogs alongside.

I’ve got nothing to go on here, and I give Starbucks all the credit in the world for opening locations all over the Valley not on Ventura Boulevard — something no other coffeeshop chain deigns to do. Do they hate making money?

I’m 90 percent expecting a Chase bank but holding out 10 percent hope for a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

I won’t go into excruciating detail about the Daily News’ recent move after about 20 years on Oxnard Street in Warner Center to the shared but infinitely fancier confines of the nearby Warner Gateway office park (where Owensmouth Avenue meets the Ventura Freeway), what with the clean carpets, lack of grime on everything we didn’t bring with us (meaning there’s still plenty of grime to be had), and actual windows.

But there’s one thing I will talk about:

Better coffee.

The Organic to Go company has a little cafe on “campus” (is that the right word for this grouping of buildings?) and while the place looks pretty nice, the employees are friendly (especially the ever-cheerful Damon) and the food looks OK (haven’t had more than a bagel thus far), the one thing Damon and Co. do absolutely right is coffee.

All I’m saying is that the coffee at Organic to Go rocks extremely hard.

I had the Peru blend today, and it rivals the dark roasts at both Coffee Bean (Organic’s is less bitter but still full-flavored) and Starbucks (which, if you follow this blog, you know is gutting the very core of its business with its insistence on pushing the mild, nondescript Pike Place Roast in place of its signature dark blends).

And best of all, at $1.80 for a large coffee, Organic to Go’s coffee is not only better but cheaper than that at both S*Bucks and Coffee Bean.

Wait … it gets better.

Organic to Go even has one of those “Buy 10 get 1 free” cards, which Starbucks never had and Coffee Bean abandoned at least two years ago, if I remember correctly (and I very well may not).

So yes, the moles of the Los Angeles Daily News have a clean carpet, phones not caked with two decades’ accumulated grime, no rat traps under my desk (and yes, years ago I did unwittingly grab one — rat included — while looking for an errant pen on the floor), bathrooms with no-touch fixtures that’ll probably save me six communicable diseases per year and real windows to the outside world (which here includes quite a few trees).

820 Montana Ave, Santa Monica, CA
According to a Seattle Times reader.

Again, this is unconfirmed, but I can see that happening, because there’s literally two Starbucks on every block on Montana Avenue. There’s a busy one on Montana and 7th Street, so 820 Montana is a mere block away.